


two

by junietuesday25



Series: one to six [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aromantic Characters, Gen, Homophobia, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22551610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junietuesday25/pseuds/junietuesday25
Summary: The girl is a loner.Of her own will and desire, of course. Not because she’s a little too open about her opinions (particularly about romance), and a little too closed-off when they ask her why she has them. Not because she’s terrified what her fellow ninth graders will do to her when they realize she has no soulmark. Not because she figures that she might as well just push them away first, before they can push her.
Relationships: The Boy (OC) & The Girl (OC)
Series: one to six [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621549
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: AroWriMo 2020





	two

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to part two of "one to six"! this week's prompts were "community" and "acceptance". cw for homophobia, sex references (the girl is alloaro), and briefly mentioned ableism and racism

The girl is a loner.

Of her own will and desire, of course. Not because she’s a little too open about her opinions (particularly about romance), and a little too closed-off when they ask her why she has them. Not because she’s terrified what her fellow eighth-graders — wait, no, now ninth-graders — will do to her when they realize she has no soulmark. Not because she figures that she might as well just push them away first, before they can push her.

Anyway, they’re all stupid bigoted assholes, so she doesn’t wanna talk to them anyway. One measly little rainbow pin on her backpack, and suddenly everyone in her class refuses to go near her, like she’ll sneeze on them and give them the gay germs. God.

Well, not everyone, apparently.

“Yo, dyke!”

The girl is grabbed with meaty fists from her backpack and is shoved into the wall, like some fucking YA novel. Her face slams into the disgusting plaster, scraping and stinging. Fun.

“Let me go!” the girl hisses. “You moronic—”

Her face is ground deeper into the plaster. What an amazing way to spend the literal second day of high school.

“Say that again,” her ambusher says. Blonde-haired, brown-eyed, a face that says “I toss around the n- and r-slurs for shits and giggles and complain when people say ‘moist’”. “I dare you.”

The girl keeps her mouth shut, against her instincts, because her brain does at least have the barest hint of self-preservation programming. 

“God,” the ambusher observes, pushing up the girl’s sleeves. Then she nudges up the bottoms of the girl's pants to look there. “No soulmark? What a loser.” She tugs down the neck of the girl’s shirt to see the blank collarbone. “Well, you’d guess there wouldn’t be any other lesb—”

“Girls!”

A voice echoes through the hallway, and the girl’s ambusher springs upright as a teacher crosses the hallway to them. The girl pants, propping herself up against the wall and disguising it as a casual lean.

“G’morning, sir,” the girl says.

“We were just having a little chat,” says her ambusher.

“Okay,” the man says skeptically. He looks at the ambusher. “Miss, the principal would like to speak to you. And you—” he nods at the girl once the ambusher has stalked off “—come with me?”

“I, um, have class,” the girl tries awkwardly, but the man waves it off.

“I’ll give your teacher a note saying I asked for you.”

They walk down the hall, passing bustling classrooms into what seems to be the man’s office. Oh. He’s the guidance counselor. She’s getting a chat with the school’s shrink.

“So,” the man says, as he sits down behind his desk and the girl is gestured into a plushy armchair in front of it. “What was she bothering you about?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, and suddenly realizes she has no clue whether or not this guy is homophobic, but what to do now. “She was just harassing me and looking for my soulmark I think, she said I didn’t have a soulmate because I’m a lesbian—”

“That’s not true,” says the man. “Sexuality doesn’t prevent you from having a soulmate. Your orientation—”

“No, she’s right,” the girl admits quietly, because she can’t bear to hear this man go on about the topic for nothing. “I…don’t have a soulmark. Which probably means no soulmate.”

The worst thing is that she’s sort of happy about it. Like, she doesn’t like that people bully her for it, but while she’s totally cool with romance for other people, when they try to shove her into it, it just feels messed up and wrong.

But she’s tried. She’s _tried_ to make herself crush on people, she’s _tried_ to make herself want to date and marry them, but no matter what she does, the closest she can get to desiring love is wanting to have sex with the girl she likes and cuddle and kiss her afterwards. 

The girl looks up at the man, and his expression has gone all soft.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You want to know a secret?”

The girl can’t resist that, so she nods.

The man pulls up his sleeve, and his arm reads, “Good morning!”

“My parents put this tattoo on me for years,” he says. “It’s a fake soulmark. I don’t have a real one.”

Holy _shit._ One, this guy is just _telling_ her this? And two, there’s someone else? Someone else who doesn’t have a soulmate? And he doesn’t seem depressed or sick or anything, like her parents told her soulmate-less people always end up as. He seems…like a normal person. Kinda chill. 

“Really?” the girl says, staring at the soulmark. It seems so real. But there’s something…slightly off…

“Yeah,” he says. He slides a pack of baby wipes to her across the desk. “You can wipe it off, see?”

The girl takes a baby wipe and scrubs at the dot on the i. It comes clean off with a few seconds of pushing at it.

“Oh,” the girl says. A hesitation. “Should I do that?”

“No!” the man says, so emphatically that the girl looks up. “It’s not something you should hide. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Don’t be ashamed of it.”

The girl gives a pointed look at the tattoo, then meets the man’s eyes.

“Yeah,” he says, sheepishly. “I need to learn that lesson myself. You’re the first soulmate-less person I’ve ever met, too.” He pauses. “How about we make a deal. You try to be okay that you don’t have a soulmate, and I’ll do the same. I’ll stop wearing this tattoo.”

A moment.

“Okay,” the girl says, and the two shake hands.


End file.
